WhatsApp is more popular than Twitter and introducing a subscription?

Whatsapp, currently being courted by Facebook, has revealed that they're more popular than Twitter.

Speaking at some unspeakably dreary conference, Whatsapp CEO Jan Joum revealed that, for the first time, the service has more monthly active users than Twitter. Of course, they didn't say how many that was exactly, or whether that was a comparison to just the official Twitter app and ignored all the affiliate traffic, but he did say that the app is seeing eight billion inbound and 12 billion outbound messages a day, which is handsome either way you look at it.

Alas, Whatsapp isn't making much money and is looking into introducing a subscription model.

Joum said: "We're looking forward to a world with billions of phones. and once that happens it's going to be extremely easy to monetize. But a lot more people need to join the smartphone revolution and a lot more people need to buy more goods on their phones."

"We do have a manifesto opposing advertising. We're proud of that. Who likes advertising? We're so bombarded with ads so much in our daily lives and we felt that smartphones aren't the place for that," adding: "Our phones are so intimately connected to us, to our lives. Putting advertising on a device like that is a bad idea. You don't want to be interrupted by ads when you're chatting with your loved ones."

@ you - it's not massively inferior, it's just that there is no limit to the number of messages you can send on WhatsApp, it's quicker to deliver them (so easier to instant message), and you have a better idea of whether the message has been read or not.

LOL, add a subscription charge? "You don’t want to be interrupted by ads when you’re chatting with your loved ones." Well we don't want to pay, but they have obviously calculated that they would get more money with a subscription base model. What they haven't factored in is alot of the users will leave, myself included.
Fail on the WhatsApp